I don't understand it. You're either male or female. There's nothing in between. He, she, they, them. I can't keep it all straight.
No matter what I say, I feel like I'm gonna offend somebody. When she decided to transition, I've wondered how to stay friends, but also tell her the truth. Hmm, well, statements like those reflect some of the confusion and fear and even anger that many people have about gender issues today. And we're going to explore this really complex topic today and learn how we as parents can help our kids to navigate the turmoil. Welcome to another episode of Focus on the Family with Jim Daly.
I'm John Fuller. John, this is a difficult topic, gender dysphoria. It's really come onto the scenes in a powerful way since 2018, 2019. That's when it kind of flooded into the public square.
So it's a relatively new phenomenon. And a lot of Christian parents don't even know how to talk about it, how to engage their kids about it. Public schools are way ahead of parents in terms of the issue. And there's a lot of friction being created. About 50%, as I understand it, about 50% of public schools do a lot to encourage a child to go with a different gender.
And here's the data that's so shocking. I've read this from the APA, the American Psychological Association. They have a panel on gender dysphoria. It was 70 to 90%. 90% of gender dysphoric preteen and teens will self-correct to their birth gender by the age of 19.
So, this is the big problem: we're derailing that normal self-introspection that's going to occur for some kids. But we're really talking about 10 to 20 percent that'll be gender dysphoric beyond 19. That's significant, and Europe has woken up to this and they have backed off. But the U.S. still is going headlong into hormone treatment and even, you know.
Physical mutilation in order to achieve this for 12, 13, 14-year-olds. And we're going to talk about it today so you're better equipped to have that discussion. And our guests include Dr. Kathy Cook from Celebrate Kids and Dr. Jeff Myers from Summit Ministries.
And they interact with thousands of youth on a regular basis.
So they really understand where kids are at, where the culture's at, and they come from a biblical perspective and help us think this through. And we're so glad to have them. They've written a book called Raising Gender Confident Kids: Helping Kids Embrace Their God-Given Design. Excellent resource. Get a copy from us here at the ministry.
The link is in the show notes. Kathy and Jeff, welcome back to Focus on the Family. You've each been here many times separately, but never together.
So it's great to have you both here. We're excited. Thanks. Let me start here. And this is, again, a tutorial on what's happening: sexual issues, sexual identity in the culture, et cetera.
So that's the spirit in which we're trying to hit this. You know, Dr. Dobson said this many years ago. Ago coming out of USC, and of course he had a PhD in child development. And he always was concerned about gender dysphoria, homosexuality, and other things because he said it should be relatively steady in a culture.
And I think as they measured some of those things, it stayed steady between 2.5 to 2.8% of the culture around the world, Japan, France, US, that would identify as LGBT. Then you have episodic moments. And he would say those episodic moments are more behavioral in nature. Discuss that. I think right now with gender dysphoria, it's up 1,600%.
I've seen estimates as high as 4,000% increase in transgenderedism and gender dysphoria.
So both of you have PhDs. I mean, when you're looking at this, you're studying, you're looking at research. Why do we have this episodic thing occurring and what does that point to typically? There are two things that come immediately to my mind. One of them is social media.
That is a phenomenon that... Wasn't really in the picture.
So it's an 15 years ago. It isn't. There's kind of an influence. There was a particular study done by Lisa Littman that found that of young women who thought of themselves as gender dysphoric, 66% of them admitted to overusing social media.
So they felt there was something wrong with my body. I feel uncomfortable. There's got to be a solution to this. Isn't there a pill I can take? And then all of a sudden, they started looking at TikTok and, oh, there are other people like me.
Now I understand who I am.
So it was the social media influence. I think also, and you mentioned this in the intro, Jim, the public schools have really grabbed onto this.
Now, there's an anti-bullying impulse. We don't want kids to go to school and feel bullied. Right, any child. What we didn't realize is how many people in the educational sphere sort of take that anti-bullying impulse and weaponize it for an agenda. And this particular agenda is: we're going to get rid of all distinctions that would make people.
Even think they could know the truth, and then if nobody thinks they can know the truth, then everyone will be fine. Kathy, any input on that from your study, your research? When it comes to episodic application to this, why it explodes in Greece and Rome and now the West? I obviously agree with everything you just said. Let me bring up the mental health crisis.
You know, you have done many excellent episodes about that here. We both have studied that. We talk about that every chance we get. Depression, anxiety, stress, loneliness, confusion, being overwhelmed. And they're thinking, oh, if I could change my gender, then everything would be fine.
They actually think that's a simple solution to something that's rather complex. And that's not true at all. The research would say that they become even more suicidal after they've medically transitioned because it didn't work. And they were sure that this would be the cure. And what's really sad for us about that is if they choose to medically transition through medication or even surgical decisions, then we don't treat the mental health, right?
Everybody assumes, oh, now they'll be fine.
So now we have somebody. Who's radically changed their lives, and it won't be good for them in so many ways. And now they're still depressed, they're still anxious, they're still overwhelmed, they're still suicidal, and we're not treating that because the assumption is: oh, that change that they've made is going to take care of all of this.
So, that I think is a terrible tragedy for us, something that we really are concerned about. And I do love the stat that you shared at the very beginning, Jim, that if we keep our hands off, if we do long waiting, If we listen well, and we have a lot in the book about conversations, if we listen well, if we continue to talk about all of who they are and not just the fact that they're male and female, then they can overcome this confusion. They'll be introduced to abilities and talents and habits that they have that they're going to go, oh, it's good to be a girl if we wait. And if we don't wait, like in the background. but we wait present with them and introduce them to the whole of what life can be.
Yeah. And we did a program not long ago with Elizabeth Wanning on my Refocus podcast recently. She was a former lesbian and, you know, subsequently found Christ and dedicated her life more concretely to the Lord, if I could say it that way, and got married to a man, etc. She runs a ministry called Changed, and in that discussion, she was talking about the current Gnosticism.
So there's nothing new, but this disconnection from physical identity to just spiritual. Therefore, the body doesn't matter. But God Himself said, you know, He created us in His image, male and female, and the two shall become one flesh in the context of marriage. And she was saying this is a direct attack on the Creator, that when you start discounting gender, when you discount how God has made us, and say, hey, just the spirit matters. It's not what's on the outside.
That's inconsequential. But it does take away from natural law, what Paul wrote about, and it makes that less important to some people that aren't theologically rooted. I mean, this is a deep question, but you are shaking your head yes, emphatically, because this is an attempt for the modern-day Gnosticists to kind of imply that the body's not where it's at, but it is a distinction. This is where a lot of young adults are today. And at Summit Ministries, we work with about 70,000 of them every year in our various programs and curriculum courses.
So we have a lot of feedback on this. Most young people who say I'm transgender or non-binary, it's not a sexual decision that they're making, it's an identity decision. They're saying, my Physical body has nothing to do with who I am as a person. And that is the Gnosticism. Gnosticism says there are two separate realities: there's the spiritual reality and there's the physical reality.
The spiritual reality is the real reality. The physical one is just temporary, it's evil, it's distasteful.
So the more you can separate yourself from that and embrace the spiritual, the better off you are. It's the same heresy that the gospel writers dealt with. And it's really significant, I think, for Christians to realize: no, Jesus came in a body. He was here in a body. He talked about how to glorify God in your body.
All of these things should enable us to ground a biblical worldview with our children so that this confusion doesn't turn into something where they actually damage the children.
So, looking at culture today, Jeff, I'll direct it to you, and you can jump on this, Kathy, as well. When you look at this issue of gender dysphoria and the lack of confidence some young people have, preteen and teens. In how they're created. What's at the core of that? I mean, again, I'm sure they're not looking at all of the Gnosticism and the science and everything else, but there's not confidence in their gender.
And I think the straightforward question is: why are more young people feeling like that? Than just accepting this is how I've been created, and this is who I am. Why the distaste? for that gender. The answer to that question is going to depend on the child, whether it's a boy or a girl, and what age.
All of those things are different.
So sometimes it comes about by bullying. We had a middle school student very upset say, I was told at school, if I haven't kissed a girl, then I'm gay. And so now I don't know who I am. We had a young girl who went to an after-school art club. It was not an art club.
It was a transgender indoctrination club. And she became so depressed that a year later, she was still struggling to come out of it. There are young women who feel bullied in school or their bodies are changing and they aren't comfortable in that. And so they aren't sure what to do. And they think, man, I would be better off if I were a boy.
I would feel more secure.
So there are all different sorts of things that happen, but it often is the influence of peers and of teachers, even teachers who try to help. If you're saying, if you're helping by, okay, what are your pronouns today? You eventually. give the child the impression that you should be transgender or non-binary. That would be the normal thing.
So we're going to sort of coax you along in it. Yeah, I mean, it's again, it's a web of yarn. to try to figure out what's happening in the culture, why we're encouraging it. Kathy, let me just ask you, I mentioned this in the open about Europe. It's interesting to see the contrast between the US and Europe when it comes to medical intervention for gender dysphoric children.
Europe started, even before the US started, they had a hospital in England called Tavistock, very aggressive with surgeries as well as hormone treatments. Then they ended up with about 1,000 lawsuits. From patients, the minors, saying, You've torn me apart physically. I mean, all these lawsuits, and then the medical community began to reverse itself in Sweden, in Finland, in France, in the UK, saying we're doing more harm than good. And I applaud that.
They looked at the science, they thought they were going to do something good for these kids, and they identified that they were doing more harm than good. That's the typical medical Hippocratic oath, right? They began now only to do dozens of small test things. The hundreds, the thousands of interventions are not being done in Europe today. But the U.S.
continues. It's almost like it's so political here that even medical professionals can't rip themselves from the politics of this and look at the pure science. True, and yet we do write in the book about the fact that it is changing here. We are encouraged that some of the quote-unquote scientists have been found out as having been manipulated by the dollars, if we could put it that way. They are outright lying to family members and to the young people and the children themselves.
And we're encouraged by the change that we believe is beginning, that we believe will continue. They're mad when they figure out that the problem that they had, they still have. And I'll say this, and Jeff, certainly elaborate on that because you're much more into that side of things than I am. But if I could back up a little bit and say something that I think I'm going to guess is on Jeff's tip of his tongue as well. We define gender dysphoria in our book as a clinical, like a deep-rooted clinical dissatisfaction with one's gender.
And most of our children don't have that. Most of our children have a day here and a day there when they didn't like being a girl or a boy. You know, it was awkward in the moment. Reason. You know, as an example, so I'm tall, I'm 6'1, which radio listeners can't see that, of course, but I am 6'1.
And when I was just a young girl, first grade, I said to my mom, I don't want to be tall anymore.
Well, to God be the glory, I had a mom to hear my heart cry. I knew that I could trust her to handle my dissatisfaction with myself.
Well, she didn't say, well, get over it, you're going to be tall. And she also didn't think, oh, how could we fix it? Like, are we going to cut six inches off between the knee and the ankle? No. My mom told my dad, and they talked with me, and I enrolled in tap dance class by the end of the week.
I was the center of the back row. All of a sudden, being tall was really cool. And now, of course, it's one of my great advantages because you can see me when I sit, and I can put my suitcases into the overhead bin with no trouble.
So, you know, the longer that we waited, the greater that my height became. But here's the thing. Back in the day, parents didn't have the thought that they could medically solve a daughter's problem. I simply didn't like my height. My mom and dad knew to change my attitude.
They knew to change my beliefs about being tall. This is a passion we have. This is why we wrote a book about prevention because we have got to teach our young people that being uncomfortable with yourself for a moment or for a year doesn't mean you surgically change yourself. That's called junior high. Come on.
That's everybody's uncomfortable in junior high. But you're so right. But here's the difficulty: the culture, at least part of the culture, wants to take that feeling and that emotion and then trade, you know. push the wind in that child's basic understanding of what they're feeling toward radical Intervention. A case in point would be Chloe Cole, who we have in our film Truth Rising.
At about 13, she felt she wanted to be a boy.
So she goes to her parents. They end up with medical attention. She now has a lawsuit, from what I understand. And she never received any kind of negative feedback about what would be entailed. She had double mastectomy, she had hormone intervention, and she said the damage that was done to her body.
is irreparable. And by the time she was 16, 17, she said she no longer had those feelings. But now she's trapped. That's what we're talking about. Jeff, I want to mention this or direct this to you because you're doing this every day at Summit, and that's to equip young people with the right pillars in their life to better understand scripture, who they are, their identity in Christ, really vital things that are too thin in the Christian community today.
And in that regard, you talk about Christians being spiritually ignorant. And I think that's true. When we do research, you have now kind of two, at least two, maybe three divisions of the Christian experience. Researchers will refer to born again as Christian light. They made a commitment to Christ.
They really don't go to church very often. They don't read scripture very often. And then you have another version of that, but again, Christian light. Then you have convictional Christian. And it's not a large percentage of the U.S.
population. I mean, it's estimated to be about 8%.
So when you think of the U.S. as a Christian-oriented nation, it shows you there's a big gap between just saying I'm a Christian and then living Christianly.
So speak to this issue of. The church widely, not just preteens and teens, but the church widely not understanding a biblical context for human sexuality. And you have 30 seconds. Coach out. Most people I've met in this country and around the world say they believe in God.
That belief in God is like a 90% issue. It's a 90% issue. But it's not that well formed of a belief system. At some ministries, we're teaching students that. Who you are depends on whose you are.
If you belong to God, then that affects everything else in your life. What you believe about God will determine what you think is actually real. What you think is real will determine what you think is right or wrong. What you think is right or wrong will determine everything else. What you think makes a psychologically healthy person, what makes a good society, what makes a good economic structure, political structure, legal structure, and everything else.
So we're trying to help people understand this commitment, yes, there is a God, has to be extended. Yes, and I know God personally through Jesus Christ. And when I do that, then reality itself opens up. John 8:32, Jesus said, You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. And the truth we're trying to get across to young adults who deal with gender struggles is not that, oh, well, you're going to be gender dysphoric and you got to go through all of therapy and so forth.
Most families are not dealing with that. And Kathy alluded to this earlier. Most families are dealing with, I have a child who is uncomfortable. In their body. How do I help them learn to be comfortable being uncomfortable in those teenage years?
One of the students I worked with, she had been very frustrated because she had a friend who was very cute and sheer leader, and she just felt she didn't feel like she'd matched up. But her mentor very wisely said to her, You know, someday you're going to figure out what to do with your frizzy hair, someday you're going to get contacts, someday the braces are going to come off. But what will endure is what you're working on right now, which is your character. It is a disservice to young people to sexualize them at such an early age that they miss that character development that I believe God wants them to have. That's so good.
If I could elaborate as well, like we totally agree. We see this all the time at Celebrate Kids: people who believe in God enough to say, I'm a Christian, but when you push it, you know, well, what's the evidence? Like, if I met you somewhere other than here, would my spirit connect with you and your spirit? And one of the things we've been talking about more and more is helping young people love God so much that they they don't want to break his heart. Like, I don't not sin because I know the law.
I work to not sin and live a righteous life because I value the sacrifice of Christ and I don't want it to go to waste and I don't want to grieve God's heart. And it's not easy every day, but my goodness, it's worth it. Absolutely. Kathy, one of the things I want to make sure day one here, we'll have you guys come back next time and we'll continue this discussion. Thank you.
But this issue of what particularly this generation is facing. Of course, we had COVID. I know with my youngest, I mean, his junior, senior year were the COVID years. They didn't do prom. They had like a lot of intervention things going on to make sure things were safe in the school environment, et cetera.
It really was disruptive. And I think researchers are now seeing, you know, in the area of depression, anxiety, a lot of children that were in that moment. It was very unsettling. And so when you add that to gender issues as well, there's just this confluence of confusion. Occurring, and I wanted to ask you about this idea of depression, anxiety, all kind of fomenting at the same time here.
I think the CDC said between ages of 15 and 25, there's been like a 50% increase, or 50% of the children and young adults in that age group have some form of depression or anxiety. That's half the population in that group. If we can believe that. Yeah. Okay?
There's a lot of people who are anxious, but they don't have anxiety. There's a lot of people who can have a depressing week, but they're not depressed. And this is very important language because we believe, and you've heard me say this many times on the broadcast, that identity controls behavior.
So we can't allow our children to talk about, I'm so depressed. Are you really? That's good. And people who say, oh, I had such a bad day, very few people have bad days.
Now, you can have a bad day. Let me make sure my audience is hearing this. You can have a bad day.
Someone dies, there's a diagnosis of cancer, that's a bad day. A lot of children have a bad first period. But they had such a horrible day. No, you didn't have a bad day. You were caught out for not studying for a quiz on period one.
No, you didn't have a bad day. We've got to tell the truth to our kids. We have to hold them accountable to telling the truth. And we also need to understand that a lot of our parents today, and you know, COVID was real.
However, the data about depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideology all started before COVID. Loneliness started way before COVID. COVID amplified what was currently going on. Busy parents. Who are addicted to their phone and aren't as available to their kids as they maybe could be, and keep listening to us.
Like, I have the highest respect for you as parents because this isn't easy. But here's the thing, Jim: I think a lot of parents and grandparents today who see kids who are depressed and anxious are over-protecting them. They don't ever want them to have another COVID valley. And I understand that. Of course, you don't ever want them to go through something so tragic.
So you end up over-preventing, over-parenting, protecting them from all harm and all disturbing thoughts, which is why, oh, we'll just let you change your gender. If you think that that's what's going to fix you, we'll go along with that. And this is where we have to say no. And this is why we wrote the book. We want to empower parents to have compassion and hope and truth and confidence that you can say no to these things that aren't sensible because they're not true in the scripture.
Yeah. And you say yes. You say yes to the yes thing. You say yes to the yes things. Yes, you are designed in the image of God.
We are going to affirm you. But not in the way a school or the culture might affirm you. We are going to affirm God's design in you. And that's what we want to see brought out. You know, right at the end here, let's mention this because that's the conflict.
I mean, those that believe there is a God and believe the God of the Bible and those that don't. And this is really spewing into the public school arena, right? That's why parents are upset. There's a lot of conflict. You know, we saw the Virginia issues with the bathroom situation, et cetera.
So when we're looking at this, How do we have compassion and recognize that some students actually do have issues, serious issues, and our heart goes out to them? Particularly as Christians, we need to own that and know that they're struggling. But to take down other children who are just dealing with, I'm not comfortable in my body, and try to convert them into more serious, to your point a moment ago, Kathy, the sky is falling, I don't know if I'm a boy or girl or something else, and you amplify that insecurity rather than soothe that insecurity and find a way. Can we not, as a culture, agree on shouldn't we try to find that solution? We're fairly agreed.
80% of parents do not want schools teaching this. Two-thirds of teachers, according to a teachers union survey, said they do not like teaching this. Only 4% said they think it's a helpful addition to the curriculum to have gender ideology as part of what they think.
Well, and that kind of gets back to the breakdown of the culture. That's right. That 4% would be very positive about those things. When you're approaching an issue like this with young adults, tackling it head-on can be very threatening to them. You kind of make it a jam.
You just sort of walk alongside, not even necessarily looking them in the eye, just walking alongside and saying, It's going to be okay. You're not crazy. You're not alone. You do not have to believe what people at school say to you. They do not love you.
They do not know you. God loves you, and God knows you. Relaxes somebody so they can think, okay, I just need a little bit bigger perspective. Yeah, that's well said. What a difficult topic, but I think we've begun to address this.
And Kathy, Jeff, thank you for being with us. It's an honor. Thanks, Jim. Thank you. Appreciate it.
And I'm looking forward to delving into this because it helps me to communicate with my boys and with those around us. And I think parents are going to benefit from this knowledge. And we need your help to get this message out to as many families as possible. Get a copy of this book for your friends and especially for your church. Send a gift of any amount to focus on the family.
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Yeah, we're a phone call away, 800, the letter A and the word family. Of course, we've got copies of the book, Raising Gender Confident Kids here at the ministry, and other resources like our counseling team. If you need to talk to somebody because we've touched on some things that are pretty sensitive in your life, we've got Karen Christian counselors. Again, 800, the letter A and the word family, or look for the link in the show notes. Join us again tomorrow as we continue the conversation with Dr.
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